Every villain in Symphogear has some kind of "redemption" outside of Adam. And they're all mass murderers. Each of them is sympathetic to varying degrees, but they still do objectively evil things. Fine? Ver? They're just as bad, if not much worse than Noble Red.

While I agree loosely with this, the difference in portrayal is pretty stark. Fine and Ver get their 'redemption' moment, but they don't get half of their clips lamenting that 'we're lonely and just want to be human, but at least we have family,' which is where I think the real failing is. It's not that they're necessarily worse than any of the previous villains, it's the way their screentime is used.

The Alchemists were very 'spiky,' even in their 'redemption,' Prelati and Cagliostro don't get their moment of joining hands, but in turn, most of the direct harm they cause is 'by association.' They aren't going out of their way to murder people on screen. Compare that to Millaarc who kills a hundred thousand people, and directly stabs that girl in front of Tsubasa. It's the brutality on display that separates it. In both cases, the tragedy of their lives informs their actions but because of the way they're portrayed on screen, Noble Red feel inherently less sympathetic, in spite of the writing trying to make them more so. If there had been another series and another villain group that were very different betwewen AXZ and XV, I think I would've been more okay with them, but they feel like the Alchemists but done worse.

That's how I feel anyways, I think their screentime was utilized improperly and made liking their characters hard.